Royal Wolf Box Set by Haley Weir
Chapter Sixteen
When he woke up the next morning, Aeron’s purpose was renewed. Even though he was still grieving the loss of Samar, the words that Cassandra had set to him had lit a fire within him. He was going to win the second war, eliminate the other kingdom and its alpha entirely, and honor Samar’s sacrifice. When he approached the others over a steaming cup of coffee, Aeron laid out the strategy with a much clearer head than he had the night before.
“Yes, it’s still a very bold strategy,” Rubius said as he and the royal family stood around the table together. “But now it seems like it is a smart one at least.”
Aeron nodded, and he and Rubius both knew that it was meant as a gesture of appreciation and apology from the night before.
“So we storm their kingdom,” Theo said as he pointed to their battle map. “Then we rush the castle.”
“But what about the packs in the woods around their kingdom?” Holly asked. “Won’t the shifters that are loyal to the alpha come surging in once they realize that the kingdom is under attack?”
“Their kingdom works much differently than ours,” Rubius said. “My scouts have told me that the wolf shifters there live inside the city right alongside the humans.”
“Do the humans know that they are shifters?” Cassandra asked in amazement. She had never heard of such a close coexistence before.
“I don’t think so,” Rubius answered. “From the sound of it, the humans there would react in much the same way that the humans here would.”
“Wow,” Holly remarked. “Imagine all of us living side by side and no one knowing the difference.”
“Focus,” her father said as he continued to tell his gathered information to Aeron. “We need to stay focused on the strategy at hand.”
Once everything was laid out, Rubius went to rally the packs, and Theo went to gather the humans who would fight. Then they all treaded onto the hillside and approached the castle. They would surely be spotted once they were near enough for the other side’s guards to see them coming, but it still wouldn’t give them enough time to formulate an entire strategy of attack with such short notice. Aeron’s legion would still have the advantage. And that wasn’t the only advantage that he would have.
He reached his hand down into the top of his shirt and ran his fingers along the soft silken fur of Samar’s tail. It may have been a magical talisman, but it also felt like her and carried her scent. He felt as if she was with him, and that made all the difference in the world. He would win this war, even without the magical powers that the talisman granted him. He would win it for her. They approached with a cautious force, and when the gates of the other kingdom opened, and floods of their people came toward Aeron to engage them, he held steady until the moment was right and then signaled the attack.
Aeron spearheaded the fight and killed everything in his path with ease, not just one at a time, but dozens at a time. Not a single one of his people was lost. Rubius and Cassandra saw the devastation Aeron was dealing out and were in awe of the power that Samar’s talisman tail had granted him. The war was over almost as soon as it had begun, and Aeron felt the thrill of each kill course through him as a vindication of Samar’s sacrifice. This time, once the battle had reached an obvious point of conclusion, Aeron was not about to let them simply flee back to their kingdom to regroup anothertime. This time, he would make sure to finish it. Rubius was quick to find and capture the alpha and bring him before Aeron. He pushed the alpha down onto his knees as Aeron stood towering before him. The alpha looked filled with anger and embarrassment about his defeat, and Aeron was pleased by it.
“Do you want to know how it was that I could so easily defeat your battalion?” Aeron asked him tauntingly.
He reached into his shirt and pulled out Samar’s tail that was hanging affixed to a chain that hung around his neck.
“You had the Kitsune’s tail,” the alpha sneered. “That explains it. So I see that you and I aren’t so different after all. We both wanted to kill her for her tail. You just managed to do it first.”
The fury in Aeron’s face made his skin turn a brilliant shade of scarlet.
“I did not kill her,” Aeron snarled at the alpha. “You did, when you lit the forest on fire. How ashamed you must be of your failed efforts.”
The alpha wrestled against the grasp that Rubius had on his shoulders, but Rubius held him firmly in place. Aeron wanted to taunt the bastard a bit before he killed him. This was the man that was responsible for all that had happened. This was the pack leader who put a kill order on Samar.
“You know,” Aeron said in a cold and callous tone. “I suppose if it hadn’t been for you, Samar would never have had to flee to my kingdom and shown up on my castle doorstep. So I guess it is you that I should thank for now being the most powerful alpha in the entire surrounding lands. What a shame that you are such a pitiful failure.”
Aeron looked around at the surviving followers of this alpha. He wanted to make sure that they were all watching and listening. He watched them too because their reactions would determine the fate that would meet them momentarily.
“At least I didn’t stick my cock in that thing,” the alpha sneered as he spat on the ground between them.
Without warning, Aeron whipped around, partially shifted with one long and fatally sharp claw extended, and cleanly removed the alphas head from his shoulders. When they saw their decapitated leader fall to the ground, the survivors became restless and made moves to scatter, but Aeron’s men surrounded them in place.
“Rubius,” Aeron said calmly. “Have your pack kill each and every person here that you saw following this sad excuse for an alpha.”
Immediately, Rubius and his pack began to slaughter all of the standing shifters. When they had finished, they went into the other kingdom to see what survivors remained inside the city. All that remained of the opposing pack and kingdom were a few women with their children and some elderly people from the town. They killed anyone that posed a possible future threat, and then brought the very scant number of innocent survivors along with them. Rubius made them pledge fealty to Aeron’s rule as they walked, and those that didn’t were immediately put down. By the time they had reached their side of the forests, there was only a couple of dozen people remaining.
“Theo,” Aeron said to his son. “Since your pack is the smallest and the newest, and since it is comprised of misfit survivors of other fallen packs, it would seem a good place for these new shifters to be.”
Theo agreed, and he took the recruited shifters to his pack territory. With Marquette by his side, he would attempt to assimilate them into his pack.
“Do you think that he’ll be able to turn that pack of his into something good?” Cassandra asked as she watched Theo and Marquette walk away with the newly acquired shifters. “It’s such a random and turbulent mix of people.”
“I think that if anyone can do it, our son can,” Aeron said with confidence. “He may not come into rulership with ease, but he has exactly what it takes to be a good alpha.”
She smiled. “He gets that from you.”
While Cassandra and Rubius went up ahead a bit, Aeron slowed his horse’s pace down and enjoyed the last part of the ride home alone with his thoughts. He realized as he rode that he hadn’t ever really properly grieved Samar’s death. He had been angry, he had lashed out and been reckless, and now he had even used those intense emotions to slay the one who killed her and to dismantle the pack that she ran from. But when all of it was said and done, he was still left alone with his thoughts. He closed his eyes and let the horse find its own way back to the castle. He thought about Samar and all of the things that he had just started thinking about before she had died, like what wonderful things their future could hold together, and what a part-fox child of his might have looked like. And as he rode in the silence and darkness of his closed eyes, he mourned her death and cried the tears that he had been holding in.